Wage growth hasn’t stalled for the very top earners — senior executives and the highest paid workers in finance — who have seen their compensation soar compared to the typical workers, according to data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute.
According to EPI’s analysis, from 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation rose more than 725 percent, while pay for the average worker rose just 5.7 percent. As a result, while a CEO earned roughly 20 times the typical worker in 1965, that gap has exploded in the last 50 years.
NBC News
December 9, 2013
The American Legislative Exchange Council may be falling on hard times due to negative attention on “Stand Your Ground” laws following the death of Trayvon Martin. Dana Milbank and Lee Fang discuss.
As Think Progress noted an Economic Policy Institute report found, “For any problem a businessman might have from minimum wages to bargaining rights to corporate taxes, there’s an ALEC bill to fix it.”
MSNBC
December 9, 2013
The benefits, meant to be temporary, have been extended repeatedly, most recently through Dec. 28.
“If we allow these extensions to expire, it’s going to cause a lot more pain for Americans,” says Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. She says the whole economy would take a hit if the unemployment benefits aren’t extended because unemployment checks are spent right away.
Marketplace
December 9, 2013
Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the liberal Economic Policy Institute and a fellow at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said he put little stock in the PISA results. He said educators and academics should “stop hyperventilating” about international test rankings, particularly given that students are already graduating from college at higher rates than can be absorbed by the labor market.
The New York Times
December 6, 2013
In other words, it will look as if the labor market has improved, even though it hasn’t. Indeed, some researchers argue that the expiration of benefits could even hurt the economy further by reducing consumer spending. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that this lapse could whittle 0.2 percentage points off GDP next year.
The Washington Post
December 6, 2013
On Tuesday, EPI Economic Analyst David Cooper joined NPR’s On Point to discuss the economic benefits and politics of raising the minimum wage.
NPR
December 6, 2013
On Thursday’s edition of MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner, Gabriel Snyder, editor of The Atlantic’s Wire magazine, cited EPI’s research showing the close relationship between earning the minimum wage and being in poverty, calling it an amazing chart.
MSNBC
December 6, 2013
Cowan and Kessler’s argument, on both the policy and the politics, has already been thoroughly demolished (see here and here, among other places). But what’s fascinating is the swift and decisive pushback their op-ed generated.
MSNBC
December 6, 2013
A 2012 study published by the Employment Policies Institute found that states that increase the Earned Income Tax Credit by 1 percent saw a 1 percent drop in state poverty rates.
Others disagree. Christian Dorsey, director of external and governmental affairs for the Economic Policy Institute, said tax credits should not let employers skimp on wages.
“Businesses have a responsibility to pay workers enough to keep them out of poverty,” Dorsey said. “The idea that we would simply not look at wages is passing off the problem to someone else.”
Reuters
December 6, 2013
In a powerful report published this year by the Economic Policy Institute, author Algernon Austin notes: “…The average unemployment rate for blacks over the past 50 years, at 11.6 percent, is considerably higher than the average rate during recessions of 6.7 percent.” Even worse, Austin noted that over the last 50 years, the black unemployment rate remained at a level either even or higher than during a typical recession.
The Daily Beast
December 6, 2013